ch. ix.] SPECIAL-CREATION OR DERIVATION t 439 



theological or sentimental prejudice, it so thrives under the 

 most rigorous critical scrutiny that each successive decade 

 enlists in its support a greater and greater number of the 

 most competent investigators of nature. I do not say that 

 such an a priori presumption should ever be taken as decisive 

 in favour of any hypothesis. I say only that such considera- 

 tions do have their weight, and ought to have their weight, 

 in determining the general state of mind which we bring 

 to the discussion of the relative merits of two theories so 

 different in their pedigrees as are the two theories which we 

 are now about to examine. If, with my eyes closed upon all the 

 significant facts which bear upon the question of the origin 

 of species, I were required to decide between two hypotheses, 

 of which the one was framed in an age when the sky was 

 supposed to be the solid floor of a celestial ocean, while the 

 other was framed in an age when Lagrange and Laplace were 

 determining the conditions of equilibrium of the solar 

 system, I should at once decide, on general principles, in 

 favour of the latter. And on general principles I should be 

 quite justified in so deciding. 



Happily, however, we are not called upon to render a 

 decision, upon this or upon any other scientific question, 

 with our eyes shut. In the present chapter we have to 

 examine two opposing hypotheses relating to the origination 

 of the multitudinous complex forms of animal and vegetal 

 life which surround us. And of these two opposing 

 hypotheses we shall find it not difficult to show that the one 

 is discredited, not only by its pedigree and not only by the 

 impossible assumptions which it would require us to make, 

 but also by every jot and tittle of the scientific evidence, so 

 far as known, which bears upon the subject ; while the other 

 is not only accredited by its pedigree, and by its requiring us 

 to make no impracticable assumptions, but is also corroborated 

 by all the testimony which the patient interrogation of the 

 [acts of nature has succeeded in eliciting. The former hypo- 



